Vote Different, Vote Plaid

After months of campaigning, the end is finally in sight. Today is decision day. Whether it has been pounding the steep streets of the Rhondda Fach and Fawr, phone canvassing voters in Aberconwy, or travelling across to Llanelli or Ceredigion to help my party colleagues there, a tangible appetite for change has been detectable.

It could be down to the expenses scandal, the continuing bloody war in Afghanistan that sees so many men, women and children killed every year or the fact that the gap between rich and poor has actually widened in the last 13 years under a Labour Government. Whatever the reason, people seem ready for change.

Can people bring themselves to break the habit, sometimes fostered over a lifetime of voting? Will they mark an ‘X’ in one of the other boxes. Will they think different this time? There is an alternative for people in Wales in Plaid Cymru MPs. Our three MPs built up a reputation in the last Parliament for punching well above their weight and were said by one political commentator to have achieved more than the entire Liberal Democrat party. He may have grabbed the headlines in the leadership debates with his casual, hands in the pocket approach, but Nick Clegg’s record as a Parliamentarian is not great. With Plaid Cymru, you can be assured to have someone who will answer to his constituents rather than his political masters in London. What other candidates in this election can say that?

TCeltic bloc we have formed with the Scottish Nationalist Party has a real chance of gaining for Wales and Scotland in the event of a hung Parliament, which is looking more and more likely as the polls nearer their close. Our combined tally of MPs could hold the crucial balance of power. In return for our support on an issue-by issue basis, we would gain concessions for from a coalition Government. Our manifesto pledges are wide and varying, but are linked by a common thread of ensuring the most vulnerable in society are not made to pick up the tab for the mistakes of the greedy bankers that have recklessly plunged the UK into a financial crisis. To do otherwise is neither fair nor moral, yet none of the other main UK political parties are pressing for this basic principle. For all their talk of fairness, none of the main UK political parties are walking the walk with their policies. All will slash and burn the public sector if they form the government.

So if you are sick of the same old politics and want genuine change, and not some party masquerading as an alternative simply because their leader’s tie is not blue or red, then please vote Plaid.